8. A Ghost that wore my Face
1276 Words
I kept quiet for the rest of the class, biting my tongue until I could almost taste blood. It wasn't worth provoking the hyena any further. For the sake of my grade — and my own peace of mind — silence was the smarter choice.
The monotonous ticking of the clock seemed to stretch every second, while Professor Stan's voice flowed slowly, precisely, icily. The classroom smelled of chalk and old paper, and the late afternoon light filtered through the curtains in golden blades that sliced across the floor like fissures.
When the bell finally broke the silence, it felt like a release. I gathered my things quickly, not even glancing in his direction. I could feel Danielle's eyes on me, full of questions I didn't want to hear.
"Miss Vladă, I need a word with you." Stan's voice reached me — steady, measured — but with an inflection that made me turn around against my will.
His cold, clear gaze then shifted to Danielle. "Alone."
Danielle huffed.
"Fine, message received. I'll see you tonight, Jolie," she said, leaning on my name with a hint of irony — but behind her eyes I caught a flicker of alarm. She gave me a strained half-smile, then shot a long look at the professor, almost as if daring him.
I stood still for a moment as the door closed behind her, cutting off the noise from the hallway. Silence fell — heavy, thick. Only the hum of the fluorescent light and the creak of the floorboards under my feet broke through the air.
Stan didn't speak right away. He simply stared at the desk in front of him, his fingers absently grazing an open folder, as if buying himself time. Then he looked up, and in those gray eyes I saw something I had never noticed before: a restrained unease, a faint tremor behind his composure.
"Good. Now that we're alone, Jolie..." he said at last, slowly wetting his lips. Every word seemed carefully chosen, yet there was a subtle trembling in his voice. He moved forward unhurriedly, each step soft but controlled — like a predator afraid of startling its prey.
"Tell me what occupies your mind..." he whispered, and that word hit me like a shiver. "I can't see inside it, and it's tearing me apart."
He brushed my temple with cold fingers, in a gesture that blended tenderness with torment. The touch was light, but it was enough to send a tremor down my spine. There was something deeply wrong about it — and yet, against all logic, I didn't pull away.
"What...?" I stammered, caught off guard, my voice cracking.
He silenced me by pressing a finger to my lips, with the ease of someone who had done it a thousand times before. His gaze burned.
"Please don't tell me you don't remember. Not again. Do you have any idea what that's been like for me? Is this your revenge?" The words spilled out of him, soaked in pain and longing.
The composure that usually defined him cracked open, letting something more human — more desperate — rise to the surface.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Stan, and you need to let me go now," I replied, trying to keep my tone firm. But my voice wavered when his hand slipped around my wrist, closing gently.
"No — that's not possible. You really don't remember? You've forgotten my face across time... again and again." He murmured. "And I, in this life and in others, have always looked for you. Always."
He looked at me the way you look at something you're afraid might vanish at any moment. His hands trembled slightly, but when they moved through my hair they turned certain, slow, almost obsessive.
My body reacted before my mind could catch up. Part of me wanted to say yes, I remember — even if it was a lie. To let go, to sink into his scent, into the warmth of his voice. To feel him close.
But my deepest instinct was screaming that I was not the woman he was seeing. He had mistaken my face for the memory of someone else.
"Look... I don't know what you're referring to, or why you're speaking to me this way. But I'm not who you're looking for. You have the wrong person. I'm sorry." The words came out fragile, cracked.
His gaze dropped for a moment, and I watched the pain pour over him like rain. Then it went out. He turned cold again, distant.
"I'll bring it all back to you, my dear. Everything that is yours will return." He murmured, grazing my cheek with a slow, almost reverent touch.
Then the mask fell back into place. The professor returned to himself.
"You may leave now, Miss Vladă. Bear in mind that absolutely nothing happened here." He said, moving back to his desk and beginning to shuffle through papers, carefully avoiding my eyes.
I stood there, motionless, my heart drumming in my throat. I could have asked him who he thought I was. I could have confronted him. But I chose silence instead. I adjusted the strap of my bag, breathed in deeply, and turned toward the door.
The hallway received me with a muffled quiet, lit by a dim light filtering through high windows. The air smelled of polished wood and disinfectant. My footsteps echoed too loudly, the sound dissolving into emptiness — like a sound in an abandoned cathedral.
Every window reflected fragments of the sunset: the sky was a mosaic of copper and purple, as if the day itself were bleeding.
Only when I reached the main hall did I realize I'd been holding my breath. I stopped for a moment, one hand pressed to my chest, trying to quiet my racing heartbeat. The air felt denser — and yet it gave me back some vague sense of reality.
Outside, the wind hit me full in the face — cold and sharp. My hair whipped loose, but I didn't move. I turned back toward the building behind me, and for one instant, I swear I saw his silhouette standing still behind the window, motionless, gaze lost in the distance.
A shiver ran through me.
In that faraway look, something still lingered — as if he were speaking to a ghost that wore my face.
And in that moment, I no longer knew who I truly was.
I was a disastrous contradiction.
That night sleep hit me like a dark current.
****
I found myself in a place I didn't know but recognized — in the inexplicable way you recognize things that don't belong to the present. A corridor of damp stone, flickering candles, footsteps echoing in the dark. My breath was not my own, yet it came from my mouth.
In front of me, a figure.
Him. Stan — or someone wearing his face — reaching out his hand to me, dressed in clothes from a distant century. His shirt open at the collar, his fingers stained with blood.
"Te-am găsit." I found you.
The voice broke against me like a wave, and something inside shattered.
A flash — then red. The sound of a blade, a whisper, and the iron smell of blood. I saw myself reflected in a cracked mirror: it wasn't me. I had black eyes — too black — and a smile I didn't recognize.
****
I woke with a jolt, heart hammering, the sheets damp with sweat.
Outside, the moon was full and white as an open wound.
And for the first time, I was afraid that Stan's madness was not entirely his own.
- Writer
